I had a brief not-very-real skateshop that I ran out of my bedroom in the late 80’s. I sent out a bunch of requests for wholesale catalogs and tried to open some accounts. I put together an order based on requests from locals and what I could get ahold of, I ordered some staples like mounting hardware and a roll of grip tape, etc… One of things I got was a Nash catalog. Why get a Nash catalog when the product was so poor? For shits and giggles! It’s one of the few things I kept during the great purge of 1999. Yes, I deeply regret throwing out the rest of it. Joe Cool and Mad could have been their own separate posts, but some of the products appeared on the same page, so click through if you want to see more of Snoopy and Alfred E. Neuman.
The catalog consists of a full color, glossy cover and back spread, with two full color single sided glossy sheets (one for Snoopy and the Gang, and one for roller skating products), Black and white glossy single sided sheets for the rest of the products, and some photocopied price sheets on colored paper.
Snoopy & the Gang
Not really much of a gang here, just Snoopy and Woodstock. You see these boards on the internet all the time. This catalog says the prices were effective September of 1988, so that helps put a date on these boards, at least for initial production runs.
Joe Cool
Notice the 3 different copyright dates. A lot of Peanuts gear has that original 1958 copyright date. Those other two dates must have something to do with “Joe Cool” specifically. One thing I’ve never seen, or at least noticed, Joe Cool knee/elbow pads! There’s no illustration of Snoopy, but they do say “Joe Cool” in rainbow striped letters. It was a strange choice to make Snoopy’s famous doghouse yellow instead of redin the “Slam’n Joe Cool,” especially when red is one of the colors in the print. Woodstock isn’t even skating but he’s still wearing a helmet.
It’s Boss… It’s Cool… It’s Rad…
Another one you see people trying to sell on the internet or in thrift shops, often without the handle, the Joe Cool scooter, AKA the Official Snoopy Scooter. Was there an unofficial version? This one is a bit puzzling. Snoopy is wearing a motorcycle helmet and either a leather jacket or a tuxedo jacket. Woodstock and gan all appear to have on berets.
Joe Cool’s gone MAD!
Snoopy has joined up with his buddy, Alfred E. Neuman to bring you a special assortment for your skateboard promotions.
Here’s a scan of the glossy sales sheet promoting Snoopy and Mad Magazine. Those are wholesale prices on the sheet. The display box would cost you an extra $1.17. That’s one of the Joe Cool boards we’ve already seen in color. It’s a shame that Alfred E. Neuman deck isn’t in color too. The smaller rectangles say “This sticker is sickening example of bad taste!” “This sticker was not here yesterday!” The bottom two are partially covered but one says something about flight insurance and the other starts with “Do not deface.” You gotta love the “Top Secret Confidential CIA Vehicle.” The CIA was a side gag in a lot of MAD features.
Here’s another Mad Magazine deck, this time not a small-ish cruiser lies the others, but a more modern, full size, crappy deck. This appears to be the same shape used in 290 and 295 series (stay tuned from more on that in the next installment.) The most memorable reference being the “Fly Me” deck.
NEW MAD Magazine Skateboards with Alfred E. Neuman
Introducing the first of a great new series, with the popular characters, from the Number #1 humor magazine in America.
If this is indeed the first ever Alfred E. Neuman skateboard, these can be safely dated to 1987. I’m not sure why they felt the need to add wheels to “What, Me worry?” but it’s kind of amusing.
Here’s a color pic of a MAD Man on Board as seen at the auction site Invaluable.com. If you thought this was a yellow board you would be correct. You can see this board has undergone a color shift with prolonged exposure to UV light. It’s closer to the original yellow under the rails and riser pads. How about those giant registration marks under the trucks!
Price Sheet.
This is the process sheet with Joe Cool and MAD magazine decks. Ordering must have been a little bit tricky because there’s no way to distinguish two of the Jo Cool boards. Only one the Slam’n Joe Cool deck has an identifier. The other two just have numbers that aunt printed next to the illustrations, so you’d have no idea whether you were ordering abstract art Joe Cool, or Woodstock surfing Joe Cool. The pig sized MAD Man on Board decks could be purchased for $28.88 wholesale. That seems more liek a fair retail price actually. I have to search many years of faulty memory, but I recall the first Nash board I ever bought circa 1984 was the Kamikaze board, and I swear it only cost me about $40. What a difference a couple of years can make in prices.
What about the Joe Cool DOZ’R and the MAD DOZ’R? The catalog I have doesn’t show either of those. there is a separate DOZ’R page but neither of those two boards are on it. What is A DOZ’R? A DOZ’R is one of those short, wide decks that were sometimes referred to as “locker skateboards.” I could
That’s it for today. The next installment will feature the Nash boards we all love and hate.
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